The Nature of Human Nature

Reflections on our First Unitarian Principle

By Marvin Haave

Comox Valley Unitarian Fellowship

November 5, 2006

We who go by this somewhat ungainly label of Unitarian follow no creed, no single sacred book, no mandatory code of practice. What we do have are some principles, seven in number. The Canadian Unitarian Council, of which we are a part, has undertaken to revise and update these principles, a process that seems stalled at the moment. Yet, the seven that we have contain plenty of blood and guts, and challenge us to go deeper in our spiritual journey together.

I can't remember who said of the teachings of Jesus “It's not that they have been tried and found wanting but that they have been found hard and not tried.” So it is, I believe, with this our First Principle. “We covenant to affirm and promote … the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” Who could argue with such a statement? It seems most noble, yet at the same time benign, commonplace, even trite.

It is far from benign because we see it denied around us every day, indeed every hour, by people who treat others as less deserving of worth and dignity than themselves. As we approach Remembrance Day, some of the most painful things to remember are atrocities committed in wartime. The Nazi holocaust is the most horrible example, but by no means the only one. From recent years alone we could add ethnic cleansings in Ruanda, Burundi, and the former Yugoslavia, the killing fields of Cambodia, and the treatment of untried prisoners in Guantanamo and the secret torture chambers in Iraq. Or what of religious strife in Northern Ireland, the Middle East, India and Pakistan or the Spanish Inquisition? Or what of those who sexually or physically or emotionally abuse children, the sickening examples of which range from Indian residential schools to the man this past week caught in the act of broadcasting live sex acts with a child over the internet? Or what of men showing disrespect to women, or women claiming moral superiority over men as a group. Sexism, racism, heterosexism, agism, and a host of other isms could be added to our list.

We could spend more time lamenting the bad behaviour of others. But then I imagine Jesus, the supreme satirist with a twinkle in his eye, asking “Why do you keep trying to remove the speck in your neighbour's eye when you keep yourself blinded by the log in your own?” This first principle, like all seven, challenges us to the core, to the very heart of who we are and who we would become. It challenges our gut beliefs about what it means to be human.

What is the essence, the nature of human nature? Where do we learn about what it means to be human? First Nations stories of origins often begin with animals and what humans learn from animal behaviour. Ancient Greek myths often posited a past golden age of gods and heroes, after which successive generations of humans are mere shadows. The Hebrew creation stories speak of humans being created “in the image of God”, yet this makes how we regard humans dependent upon how we regard the Deity. Is the God in whose image we are supposedly made the one who kills all the Egyptian firstborn or who commands his chosen people to kill all the males in the land they've captured, or is the God who is described as the one who sees every sparrow fall? One of these Hebrew creation stories goes on to describe a fall from grace by these first humans, and this in turn gave rise to the notion of “original sin”, by which we humans were forever after regarded as basically flawed and in need of redemption from beyond. I began to have problems with such conclusions as a young theological student more than forty years ago. Finding that the nature of God was beyond the reach of empirical investigation, I decided to write my Master's thesis on the nature of humanity, as seen by classical Christian theology and by psychology, specifically that of psychotherapist Carl Rogers. In his client-centered therapy, he spoke of “unconditional positive regard” as the essence of how we ought to treat one another. Other social sciences, such as history, sociology, and anthropology can also contribute to our view of what it means to be human.

Yet, I think we learn most of all about the nature of humanity by our own experience. It starts, most naturally, with how we were treated by parents and early caregivers as children. It continues with how we learned to think of ourselves and to treat ourselves, and others, and the learning and deciding about human nature continues throughout life as we observe other people behaving and experience ourselves behaving.

It really does come down to choosing how to regard one another and ourselves. I once had the opportunity to participate in an encounter between a Marxist and a Quaker about whether force was ever justified in a good cause. The Quaker was Mulford Q. Sibley of the University of Minnesota and, following his pacifist principles, he argued that force was never justified. So the Marxist decided to put him to the acid test. “Suppose you are living in an absolute dictatorship in which the dictator had the perverse habit of dining on human flesh and had a child killed every day for his table. Suppose you have access to the dictator and could kill him if you wish. Would you kill him?” “I wouldn't kill him,” replied Sibley. “So as the days go by you become essentially responsible for the death of scores of children, and you still wouldn't kill him.” “I wouldn't kill him.” Sitting listening to that exchange, I was grabbed in the gut. I deeply admired Sibley's principled stand; I was also convinced that our poor old world needed some fundamental changes that didn't seem to be happening by peaceful means. No calm and easy decision. Are our only choices to judge, condemn and resist or to acquiesce and let evil triumph?

That is why I contend that we choose how to regard humans, including ourselves. Yet before we are free to choose, we must come to terms with the biases, stereotypes, and prejudices that we have all inherited. In my own case these included prejudices against other religions, even Christians who were not Lutheran, Capitalism, greed, homosexuality, to some extent other cultures and races, and others of which I was not, and still am not, fully aware. But as we go through the often gut-wrenching work of exposing and shedding stereotypes and prejudices, we gain freedom to choose.

I'm not here to tell you how to regard “the nature of human nature”. I do, however, want to invite you to consider some possibilities.

First, consider how to think of the human enterprise on earth. Is it true for you that humans are fatally flawed with some version of “original sin”? Or could it be that, as the Roman Catholic writer Matthew Fox contends, humans have received an “original blessing”, to care for this garden of earth and all its beings, a blessing to live in harmony and love? This is the view that every human being is born with the innate capacity for good, every one is born deserving love and nurture and responsibility. If so, how shall we practise this stewardship, this harmony, this love?

Then, consider the view of humanity taught by Western and Eastern mystics, by Ghandi and Buddhism, and inferred by Jesus, that all is One. Ghandi's view of humanity was based on the Hindu idea of the “atman”, which is thought to be our ultimate or real being, a consciousness beyond reason and intellect. It might be called God consciousness, or a growing knowledge of the universal soul or spirit within each person that reflects the “true self”. Atman consciousness makes us identify with all of life and experience that all is One. But does such a choice mean that I am one with Adolph Hitler or Willy Pickton or George W. Bush? In an important sense I am one with them, sharing a common humanity. But then, how shall I support what I deem good and oppose what I deem evil or undesirable?

A third point of view to consider is contained in another saying of the irrepressible Jesus that “those who live by the sword will perish by the sword”. This is similar in some ways to the “law of karma” taught in Eastern thought. All our actions have consequences, and a bad act, even in the service of a good end, will have some bad consequences. Carol Lee Flanders (author of Enduring Lives; Portraits of Women and Faith in Action) has said that “every mystic know experientially that you can't harm another human being or another creature without harming yourself.” Remember Mulford Sibley's unwillingness to join the dictator in evil-doing. Consider whether any war in human history has been without bad consequences. Consider whether you believe that humans are capable of truly living in peace with one another and with the other beings on the planet.

So I say that our first principle to “affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person” challenges the heart of our spirit and of the actions that follow. It begins with how we regard ourselves. Are we willing to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of ourselves, fully, with all that that means, to love and honour ourselves, and to know that each of us is a unique manifestation of the universal spirit. Then, remembering the great commandment to “love your neighbour as you love yourself”, to extend the affirmation of worth and dignity to every other person, even to those who are hardest for us to honour. Then we begin to become peacemakers in truth, and honour our great first principle.

May it be so today.